A 20-vehicle pileup on I-96 Monday morning closed eastbound I-96 between Coopersville and Marne for more than

Cars were in the ditch, median, and crashed into each other Monday when a whiteout apparently caused a 20-vehilce pileup. Jeff Cunningham

two hours.

According to Ottawa County Sheriff's Office deputies on the scene, only one person was seriously injured in the accident that had vehicles strewn across both lanes of traffic, on the shoulder, and in the median for nearly a quarter of a mile.

It was the beginning of a string of accidents this week at nearly the same spot. By the time the snow stopped falling Wednesday night, there had been at least three more multi-vehicle crashes on the same stretch of roadway that shut down the highway and brought the total number of vehicles involved in accidents between Exit 24 and Exit 19 on I-96 to at least 40, according to Ottawa County Sheriff’s deputies.What was amazing, deputies said, was that with all of the crashes, only a couple of people were seriously hurt and no one was killed. Ottawa County Sheriff’s Lt. Lee Hoeksema said that his office has studied that portion of the highway and has not found any specific reason or design problem for the large number of accidents there.

“It could be that the highway is more open there and people speed up when they reach that section,” he said. “This week it appears that it was just good old Mother Nature coming back and people not realizing that they are driving too fast for conditions.”

In the Monday crash he said most of the people involved were driving too fast for the conditions. “After the first accident, people still came flying up onto the accident and then tried to stop to avoid a collision and by then it was too late,” Hoeksema said.

He said every winter his office has to remind people that when the area sees lake effect snowstorms like West Michigan experienced this week, area roads become icy and slippery even though they may look perfectly fine. “In the accidents there this week, most were caused by people driving too fast for the conditions and driving too close together. It only takes one car to lose control when there is a lot of traffic, to create huge accidents.”

Hoeksema said drivers need to turn on their headlights, slow down, and put more space between themselves and other drivers. “And they need to understand that just because they have four-wheel drive doesn’t mean that they have more control, especially on ice.”

Kevin Zoet-Hardy, of Spring Lake, said he was traveling east at a slow rate of speed Monday when out of what he described as a "dust storm of snow," he suddenly saw several vehicles crashed on the highway before him. "There were cars everywhere and I just tried to go into the median to avoid hitting someone else," he said. Unfortunately several other cars had the same idea and his car was hit by at least one other vehicle. "In spite of all of the accidents, I saw some good Michigan driving today. People slowed down and fortunately no was killed," he said.